By
On Top Magazine Staff
Published:
January 21, 2012

Washington state Governor Chris
Gregoire wishes President Barack Obama would join her in endorsing
gay marriage.

At a press conference earlier this
month, Gregoire for the first time announced that she supported
giving gay and lesbian couples the right to marry and would sign a
bill making Washington the seventh state to legalize gay marriage, if
approved by lawmakers.

But it has been a long journey for
Gregoire, who said she needed to overcome the objections of her
Catholic faith before she could embrace marriage equality.

“It's been always on my mind
tangentially and thinking about it, but I knew now was the time to
face it,” she told gay glossy The
Advocate. “And as I faced it both as a mom and as a wife
and as a Catholic, as a governor, and wrote it down on a piece of
paper, the logic of it all fell into the words that I put down
there.”

“It's one thing to allow freedom of
religion. It's another thing to put the state in the position where,
in my opinion, it's engaged in discrimination. To the contrary, what
I think New York and what we're trying to do here is respect
religious freedom.”

She said that she has discussed
marriage equality with gay friends, the children of gay and lesbian
couples, and her own daughters.

“I think it's fundamentally wrong to
discriminate. At the same time, I have accepted my religion can have
religious freedom to do what it chooses to do, but that cannot allow
a state to engage in discrimination, so that's been my evolution.”

She added that she hopes the president
would join her on the issue, but added that she respects his
“personal journey.”